Denny
11-05-2009, 05:25 PM
There's a lot of new things in the UDK not earlier present in UT3 and I felt that some of them are so important and powerful to use that I have to post some examples about it.
Additive Animation
This is one powerful feature which you have access to with the AnimSet/AnimTree. Normal animation blending works by interpolating one animation into the other, which means each pose will land somewhere inbetween. Additive animation adds to the animation, you could think of it as an offset or layer of extra animation onto another. Examples on what Additive Animation could be used for includes a Get Hit or Fire Animation. If you connect it properly in the AnimTree the animation can be played on any playing animation as it doesn't override it, which means the GetHit effect can be played no matter if you're jumping, driving a car or looking at your feet. This is very convenient!
Animated Morph/Material Tracks
There's a new type of animation track added to the animation sequence which is the morph track. When you have created a character and animated it in Maya and you have a Blend Shape (morph target) animated on it, the blend shape track will be exported in the .psa file. If a morph target set is applied to a mesh and it includes a morph target with the same name as the one in Maya it will automatically be played. (can be previewed in the AnimSet editor) Another addition to the morph target track is the possibility to drive a material parameter based on the strength of the morph target (0-1). If you have a material in Slot(0) which has the parameter Red, this parameter will be animated along if you specify it in the MorphTarget tab. Note though that if the same Material or Material Instance is applied to several meshes they will receive the same animation if one mesh is animated, this means you need a unique material instance per character/mesh! An example of how to use this could be that you might want to animate a facial expression and blend in a normal map with wrinkles based on the strength of the morph! The possibilities are endless.
I'm considering to make some quick video walkthroughs/tutorials with no talk and straight to the point. Would anyone be interested in that?
Additive Animation
This is one powerful feature which you have access to with the AnimSet/AnimTree. Normal animation blending works by interpolating one animation into the other, which means each pose will land somewhere inbetween. Additive animation adds to the animation, you could think of it as an offset or layer of extra animation onto another. Examples on what Additive Animation could be used for includes a Get Hit or Fire Animation. If you connect it properly in the AnimTree the animation can be played on any playing animation as it doesn't override it, which means the GetHit effect can be played no matter if you're jumping, driving a car or looking at your feet. This is very convenient!
Animated Morph/Material Tracks
There's a new type of animation track added to the animation sequence which is the morph track. When you have created a character and animated it in Maya and you have a Blend Shape (morph target) animated on it, the blend shape track will be exported in the .psa file. If a morph target set is applied to a mesh and it includes a morph target with the same name as the one in Maya it will automatically be played. (can be previewed in the AnimSet editor) Another addition to the morph target track is the possibility to drive a material parameter based on the strength of the morph target (0-1). If you have a material in Slot(0) which has the parameter Red, this parameter will be animated along if you specify it in the MorphTarget tab. Note though that if the same Material or Material Instance is applied to several meshes they will receive the same animation if one mesh is animated, this means you need a unique material instance per character/mesh! An example of how to use this could be that you might want to animate a facial expression and blend in a normal map with wrinkles based on the strength of the morph! The possibilities are endless.
I'm considering to make some quick video walkthroughs/tutorials with no talk and straight to the point. Would anyone be interested in that?